Warstories: Large battle maps

Warstories is the name I’m giving to a short series of articles meant to spark discussions and advice amongst DM’s and players. With the series, I hope to tackle common problems that crop up during the game, and see how other people deal with them at their table. This is the second of such articles.

I was working on my campaign this morning and went off on a twitter rant about the size of battle maps in some adventures. It seems that some cartographers and adventure designers are forgetting the fact that we need to somehow transfer some of these maps from their pages to our tables. Yeah, I know I have a tutorial here with a technique for scaling up and printing maps, but that’s not feasible for all. A lot of people depend on a battle mat and dry erase markers to get maps up and running.

Pretty large encounter map...

I don’t know about you, but I enjoy looking at pretty maps, but I also need practicality at the table. There has to be a middle ground somewhere. I feel some cartographers tend to get carried away in their photo-shopping glory and forget that these maps are meant for transfer to the table and not the computer screen.

So am I wrong here? How do you deal with battle maps at your table? How do you transfer larger maps while maintaining the artists intent?

I can think of three solutions that I would try if I was placed in a similar position.

1) Print off all the sheets, tape them together and then mount them to foam-core board. Might take more than one piece of foam-core. In essence, your map then becomes your table top.

2) I use two long tables that are parallel to each other (like an = sign). I found mine cheap at a local church that was replacing their older, heavier ones with the vinyl type you see on sale at Sam’s Club and the like. If you can invest in two of the lighter weight kind (and you have the floor space) it gives you almost 30 square feet of playing space (6′ x 5′). Should be plenty of room to display a map.

3) Final option…skip printing the map altogether. Use a projector and display the map on the table (or wall). Use something like MapTools or similar program. Technology is a hurdle here, but you save paper and ink, and you basically have unlimited map space. If you project on the table, you can still use tactile miniatures and accessories.

That map is large and says that each square is 5′. When I have to convert I sometimes say that the squares are now 10-15′, and inform my players of this as well. Yes it does make something less than accurate, but when you have only a limited amount of space, something like this is a quick fix and allows for the fun to keep on goin.

I’ve found that I can’t use maps that big even if I have the real estate, because it becomes impractical in combat. Players hunker down in a spot and trade shots if it’s a ranged threat, which sores up using a big fancy map since a lot of it will go unexplored – if it’s a melee threat, they engage it in a web of opportunity attacks and unless the creature has very high mobility, it tends to stay put there, because a false move can have it impaled a lot.

If you use a big map like that, you need to give the players a reason to move through it. For my Maptools online campaign this weekend, I set up a wilderness map that’s about 2 miles across. The players start at one edge, trailing a goblin warband that is trailing their orcish allies. The orc village (mostly unprotected women and children) is on the far side of the map.

The goblins keep splitting off pieces of the warband to ambush and delay the PC’s, and the PC’s have to kill or evade the goblins fast enough to stop the main attack on the village.

In our party, we have a bunch of evasive, stealthy and wilderness-based players. I’m hoping a big map like this, with rivers, trees, cliffs, mud, rockslides, will really give them a chance to shine. Also, the goals of the fight will make it more of a running battle, since the party has to catch the main warband.

I’m hoping for a “last of the Mohicans” kinda feel, and I’m using a ton of minions, skirmishers and archers in the goblins. I think it will be a blast, and I love how Maptools lets me build big, without needing a lot of geography, cause I have a very small house.

If you want to go big in real life, find somebody who has a pool table or a ping-pong table. Those give you a lot of space to set stuff up.

I have a plan to set up a projector over our table with one or two wiimotes and use something like this – http://www.uweschmidt.org/wiimote-whiteboard – with one of the mapping programs to have a fully interactive board that retains some of the tactile feel. I have dreams to make my own program that will allow me, or whoever is DM, to see a different version of the map on the computer screen to that which is being projected, allowing me to see where traps I’ve placed are, and control/track monsters that the players can’t see etc.

I’ve never had great success with large maps, space is not at a premium. I’ve been known to print out the map at a smaller scale and then just use smaller markers to indicate where the players are. Takes away from the big feel but I just don’t have anything else to work with.

“How do you transfer larger maps while maintaining the artists intent?”

My MA is in Philosophy of Art. I’m getting my PhD in Theatre History.

As best as I can tell, if you give a shit about the artist’s intent there’s a good chance you’re doing this wrong. The only thing about the battlemap that matters is whether it’s functional in a game. If the artists’ intent is something other than being immediately useful as a battlemap, then they’ve failed and I’ve failed for trying to use it instead of thinking about things like this solely in terms of utility.

I homebrew. I draw maps on my chessex battlemap that, 9 times out of 10, I made up on the spot. If I run a published adventure, there’s a good chance I’m tossing out the map anyway.

print out the map on an A3 sheet of paper and use pushpins for the PCs and monsters. it’s not often that an entire adventure requires this method so treat it as an opportunity for variety tactically and tactilely.

From the map it looks as though it’s only four enemies and maybe five to six PCs. Unless these creatures are fast flyers, or the party splits, the battle is going to gravitate to one part of the map. Just use the small map to until the battle settles in one area then draw that area.

As for big maps, there is law that says you need to use the whole thing, it’s just there so you have choices. Maybe the PCs come into to town from the West you use the West side of the map only. Maybe they leave the inn rather then the temple, so use that part of the map, whatever. Just because you have a big map doesn’t mean you need it all on the table.

One guy has done a lot of leg work for you on that project. I plan to do a similar set up for my guys soon. Got the projector, a laptop with a broken screen a a wiimote and a couple of pens… but I’m too lazy to go to my friends workshop and build the dang table.

Nice little post about maps. I always just print what there is but only tape whats needed. Im currently running the Scales of War Adventure Path. About to start module 3, The Shadow Rift of Umbraforge. So far, Ive used 3rd party created maps (high quality without scaling).

Ruhkandae – How are you using a laptop with a broken screen with the wiimote and projector? I have a laptop with a messed up LCD screen myself, running XP.

The VGA port still functions, and since the control for which screen is used is a function on the keyboard, I just make the VGA port the only output…

After writing that, I think I got your point… How do I control it after that? I snagged the broken laptop for a song but still have my main PC and another laptop that I can control the pc with via VNC. The cool bit comes from the way that maptools works… there is a host and a remote… all I do is is set the broken laptop to remote into my host machine (working laptop) and then I can control the monsters. The link I posted to the guy who has this all set up links to how to use Johnny Lee’s wiimote whiteboard program to let the users control their pugs and move the screen.

Also, if you can tell, the link was broken because it didn’t like the use of exclamation points. Copy and paste and you’ll see what I mean.

I truncate. I find the most interesting, tactically intriguing (and devious) section of the map and use it. For this map, I would render only 1 square thick of the tavern i presume theyre coming out of. Then, i’d delete 2 of the buildings on the left, a small one on the right above the townhall, and i’d shift the hall up. I’d then take out a few rows between the pilgrims and the tavern the PCs are leaving so as to ‘crunch’ the map vertically. Nothing behind the enemies is relevant so i would only render a 1 square thickness of those. That allows me the ‘oops, MORE of them pour out of a door @ location…’ if i need on the fly scaling- but honestly the enemies look like they’re attacking the pilgrims so where the came from is irrelevant until a retreat– which can be accomplished via side exits instead at no real RP cost probably.

That map would just narrowly fit on the Chessex MegaMat, which I feel is the most practical sized of the Chessex mats. The Chessex battlemat is too damn small. As stated above, though, you could cut off about 5 squares from each side and about 8 squares from the top and the bottom in addition to a little truncating and fit it on a Chessex Battlemat (the smallest of their mats). The fact that that drawing is almost exactly the size of a Chessex Megamat makes me think that was specifically the artist’s intention.

I do a lot of “mapping”, and one important thing is a map should either be “fully visible”, outdoor large encounter, a siege or something similar, or cut into pieces that the DM can add together much like when you draw manually. It works great, use tape or “sticky goo”. The trick when cutting map pieces of a larger map is to hide any spoiling parts when you have corners etc, or secret doors, the when the new piece is added, the players see, what they were ment to see.

I’m about to run the adventure in the back of the DMG2, and this will be the first time I hit this issue. Glad I remembered this post, so I could go back to it. I have a Chessex battle mat, so I think I’ll try truncating the larger battles. Some very good suggestions in here.

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My wet-earase marker ready battlemat measures 22″ x 25″ – all of my battles take place within that confined space. I put a sheet of 1/8 or 1/16″ PVC over top of the battlemat, then draw all of my maps directly onto the plastic sheet while preserving the mat for the highly visible 1″ squares. My maps are usually composed of hand drawn blue lines over the beige battlemat but, it works well for our group and my budget. I can also place Dungeon tiles and other maps under the PVC, but I always keep the battle confined to the limited space represented by the dimensions of my mat.

I do agree with all of the ideas you have presented in your post. They are very convincing and will certainly work. Still, the posts are very short for starters. Could you please extend them a little from next time? Thanks for the post.